Experimental Economics for Philosophers

Abstract

Recently, game theory and evolutionary game theory-mathematical frameworks from economics and biology designed to model and explain interactive behavior-have proved fruitful tools for philosophers in areas such as ethics, philosophy of language, social epistemology, and political philosophy. This methodological osmosis is part of a trend where philosophers have blurred disciplinary lines to import the best epistemic tools available. In this vein, experimental philosophers have drawn on practices from the social sciences, and especially from psychology, to expand philosophy's grasp on issues from morality to consciousness. We argue that the recent prevalence of formal work on human interaction in philosophy opens the door for new methods in experimental philosophy. In particular, we discuss methods from experimental economics, focusing on a small literature we have been developing investigating signaling and communication in humans. We describe results from a novel experiment showing how environmental structure can shape signaling behavior.

Quantitative methods in philosophy of language

“…Although this is still a nascent field, these experiments illustrate that methods from behavioral economics can help illuminate philosophically interesting features of language—for a recent defense of behavioral methods in philosophy of language, see Rubin, O'Connor, and Bruner (). Alongside other forms of experimental work in philosophy, these studies therefore also indicate that philosophers of language have a lot to gain by exploring methodologies from other fields.…”

Experimental Philosophy and the Incentivisation Challenge: a Proposed Application of the Bayesian Truth Serum

“…1 The vast majority of experimental philosophy research employs a survey methodology, though there are some notable recent exceptions (e.g. Rubin, O'Connor, & Bruner 2019;Diaz 2019;Alsmith & Longo 2019) to this claim. 2 Generally speaking, participants (be it lay populations or expert philosophers) are often expected to evaluate thought experiments, cases of philosophical interest, or statements more broadly (cf.…”

Experimentation in Economics

“…Instead, I will describe two main ways in which the methodology of experimental economics has been interesting philosophically, namely as an embodiment of the logic of inductive inferences and as a field in which interdisciplinary relations between economics and psychology become salient. As an illustration of how economics experiments can be conducted to illuminate philosophical topics such as the nature of signalling, language, and communication, see Rubin et al (2019).…”